Emergentisms, Both Ancient and Modern - Ganeri, J.

Emergentisms, Ancient and Modern
Jonardon Ganeri
University of Sussex
Downloaded from http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/ at King Library, San Jose State University on February 6, 2014
j.ganeri@sussex.ac.uk
Jaegwon Kim has argued (Kim 2006a) that the two key issues for emergentism are
to give a positive characterization of the emergence relation and to explain the
possibility of downward causation. This paper proposes an account of emergence
which provides new answers to these two key issues. It is argued that an appropriate
emergence relation is characterized by a notion of transformation, and that the
real key issue for emergentism is located elsewhere than the places Kim identifies.
The paper builds on Victor Castons important work on ancient philosophy of
mind (Caston 1997, 2001), but appeals to sources he has not considered.
1. Emergence: the core issues

As a position in contemporary philosophy of mind, emergentism de-
veloped out of the early work of a number of British philosophers.1
According to British emergentism, each special science (chemistry,
biology, psychology, and so on) describes a range of causal powers
that emerge from but are irreducible to the causal powers of physical
particles:
British Emergentism maintains that some special science kinds from each
special science can be wholly composed of types of structures of material
particles that endow the kinds in question with fundamental causal
powers. Chemical elements, in virtue of their minute internal structures,
have the power to bond with certain others. Certain biological organisms,
in virtue of their minute internal structures, have the powers to breathe, to
digest food, and to reproduce. And certain kinds of organisms, in virtue of the
minute internal structures of their nervous systems, have the power of
cognizing, the power of being affected by past experiences, the power of
association, and so on (Broad 1925, p. 436). The property of having a certain
type of structure will thus endow a special science kind with emergent causal
powers. Such a structure will have an emergent causal power as a matter of
law, but the law will not be reducible to or derivative from laws governing
lower levels of complexity and any boundary conditions involving the
arrangements of particles. (McLaughlin 1992, pp. 501; my italics)
1
J. S. Mill (1854), and then Lewes (1875), Morgan (1923), Alexander (1920), and Broad (1925).
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doi:10.1093/mind/fzr038
2 Jonardon Ganeri
Generalising, the satisfaction of two conditions is typically regarded as

necessary for any theory to be emergentist:
(1) Mental properties supervene on physical properties.2
(2) Mental properties confer on their instances causal powers
irreducible to the causal powers conferred by the properties
supervened on.3
One idea, indeed the leading one in discussions about emergence, is
that systems of appropriate organizational complexity have causal
powers which the components in the system, whether individually
or together, do not. Emergentism hopes to give sense to the idea
that mental properties are metaphysically dependent on physical prop-
erties but yet possess causal autonomy with respect to them.4
Jaegwon Kim (Kim 2006a; cf. also Kim 2006b) agrees that any
version of emergentism is committed to a supervenience thesis and
an irreducibility thesis, and specifically that the core emergentist idea
that emergent properties contribute new causal powers neither explic-
able by nor predictable from the basal properties is a denial of func-
tional reducibility. The two key issues for the development of
emergentism as a viable theory, he argues, are (i) to give a positive
characterization of the relation of emergence, beyond the mere denial
of reducibility; and (ii) to solve the problem of downward causation,
otherwise known as the exclusion problem or the supervenience prob-
lem. This is the problem that an instantiation of the supervenience
base is apparently a sufficient cause for any effect attributed to an
instantiation of the supervening properties. One seems forced to
choose between reductionism (mental properties are nothing but
physical properties) and epiphenomenalism (mental properties are
distinct from physical properties, but the residue is inefficacious):
genuinely novel emergent causal power is excluded.
2
See for example Van Cleve 1990; OConnor 1994; McLaughlin 1997; Kim 1999, 2006a,
2006b; Chalmers 1996, 2006; Crane 1999; Shoemaker 2007; Macdonald and Macdonald 2010a.
Humphreys (1997), OConnor (2000), and Lowe (1996), however, defend non-supervenience-
based accounts.
3
I will discuss an alleged conception of emergence which denies this, so-called weak
emergence, below.
4
As Mark Bedau observes, emergent phenomena are Janus-faced; they depend on more
basic phenomena and yet are autonomous from that base (Introduction to Bedau and
Humphreys 2008, p. 6); he elsewhere identifies dependence and autonomy as the two hall-
marks of emergence (2003, p. 155).
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Emergentisms, Ancient and Modern 3
As I will demonstrate here, the ancient philosopher of mind

Brq haspati5 and at least some of his successors are emergentists.
Responsive to the key issues Kim has identified, their work contains
materials for the articulation of a conception of the minds depend-
ence on, and autonomy from, the physical, one that will be of con-
siderable interest to contemporary philosophers of mind.
2. Indian physicalism
There are references in the Indian texts to a group of renegade
free-thinkers whose views about human life are radically at odds
with then-prevailing belief. These worldly intellectuals deny the exist-
ence of anything that smacks of the supernatural such as transcen-
dental beings, immaterial souls, or heavenly other-worlds. Life, they
say, is for living here on earth. And they have a most interesting
account of what human life itself consists in. A human person is a
material body, made, like everything else, out of the four elements
but one in which thought, reason, intelligence, and consciousness arise
as the physical elements are transformed, in a way similar to the way
that the process of fermentation leads to the emergence of the power
to intoxicate in a mixture of appropriate ingredients. The views of
these philosophers, who were known as Lokayata (worldly ), or more
commonly Carvaka, and whose central figure is the enigmatic
Brq haspati, have been deeply unfashionable, their treatises destroyed
or left to rot, their ideas subject to fierce and hostile criticism. That
they were nevertheless still known in the sixteenth century is evinced
by the report of Abu al-Fadq l, who describes their theory for the benefit
of the Mughal Emperor Akbar, saying that They regard paradise as a
state in which man lives as he chooses, free from the control of an-
other, and hell the state in which he lives subject to anothers
rule They admit only of such sciences as tend to the promotion
of what is external, that is, a knowledge of just administration and
benevolent government (al-Fadq l 18731907: vol. 3, p. 217). No truck is
given here to religion and other inner spiritual disciplines.
The contemporary inquiry into the foundations of naturalism gives
us new reasons to examine the views of these thinkers. Their most
important contribution, I will claim, is a distinctive interpretation of
the doctrine that psychological states are emergent physical states. A
separable claim is that the self is identical to the physical body. This
5
Pronounced Bri-hus-puti; date unknown (but see Appendix).
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4 Jonardon Ganeri
second claim, which I am not going to consider here, has to do with

the material constitution of the self and its identity over time, and the
view is a version of Animalism, the claim being that a person is iden-
tical with the human animal and not with either an immaterial soul or
a psychological continuum.
According to Brq haspati, thinking is due to the four constitutive
principles of matter, just as the power to intoxicate is due to the
ingredients in the wine. What we call a human body, or a sense
organ, or a physical object, is just a combination (samudaya; an as-
semblage) of earth, fire, air, and water; indeed, these four kinds of
matter are all there is. A person is a human body endued with think-
ing, and individual lives differ one from another as bubbles differ in
water. Recent work on the reconstruction of Brq haspatis text allows us
to conjecture that it begins as follows:
1.1 Next then we will examine the nature of the reals.
1.2 Earth, fire, air, and water are the reals.
1.3 Their combination is called the body, senses, and objects.
1.4 Consciousness (caitanya) [is formed] out of these [elementary reals].
1.5 As the power to intoxicate [is formed] out of fermenting ingredients.
1.6 A human being (purusq a) is a body qualified by consciousness.
1.7 [Thinking is] from the body alone.
1.8 Because of its presence when there is a body.6
Two initial observations: First, Brq haspatis commitment to physic-
alism seems to be unambiguous. He says that earth, water, fire, and air
are real, nothing else, and that what we call an object, a body, or a
sense-organ is just an aggregation. The science of the four elemental
reals just is (or rather, was)7 the science of physics, and everything
which exists, it is asserted, is identical to the elements or to some
combination of them. Second, Brq haspatis commitment to the com-
pleteness of physics is evident in his further claim that all variation in
the world is due to variation in origin (janma). The varied patterns
6
athatas tattvam q vyakhyasyamahq | prq thivyapastejovayur iti tattvani | tatsamudaye
sarrendriyavisq ayasamq jnahq | tebhyas caitanyam | kinq vadibhyo madasaktivat | caitanyavisisq tq ahq
kayahq purusq ahq | sarrad eva | sarre bhavat | (Bhattacharya 2002, pp. 6034).
7
I take it that emergence as a philosophical thesis about the nature of metaphysical de-
pendence on the physical is independent of the truth of any particular physical theory. For this
reason I reject the suggestion that ancient philosophies of mind are no longer credible because
ancient physics is not (Burnyeat 1992). Burnyeats argument, in any case, is based on specific
details of Aristotles account of the physiology of vision, which, he alleged, prevent us from
finding in him a proto-functionalist analysis of perception.
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which are seen in the eye of a peacocks tail feathers come about as a
result of details in their provenance, and the same explanation works
for all other worldly variation:
2.1 The world is varied due to variations in origin.
2.2 As the eye in the peacocks tail.8
I take this to mean that there is a complete physical causal history for
every change or difference, that is, as a version of the thesis that every
physical effect (every variation) is determined by antecedent physical
causes (its origin).
Brq haspatis philosophy of mind can be resolved into a pair of theses:
(Thesis 1) A human being consists in a living body made out of
the four elements which, in that combination, instan-
tiates mental properties.
It is striking that the term self is not used here at at all, but only the
term human being (purusq a).9 The difficulty is to extract further
resolution from a second thesis:
(Thesis 2) It is due to the combination of the elements in the
body that mental properties are instantiated.
The trouble is with the ablative, which I have translated, as neutrally as
possible, as due to. Is the claim that thinking consists in the elements
combined in a certain way, in other words, that it is made from them
(an ablative of composition); or that it is the claim that because of
the elements there is thinking (an ablative of explanation); or is it the
claim that thinking is produced out of them (an ablative of causation)?
Later sources will disambiguate this ablative in two different ways, as
well as offering a distinct three-way disambiguation of the statements
taken as a group. These disambiguations generate a range of philo-
sophical positions about the mindbody problem. I will argue that
from among the ensuing positions one can retrieve materials for a
distinctive variety of emergentism.
8
janmavaicitryabhedaj jagad api vicitram | mayuracandrakavat (Bhattacharya 2002, p. 604).
9
Brq haspati reserves for the term purusq a human being the same sense that P. F. Strawson
does the term person, that is with reference to specimens of a type of entity such that to each
individual of that type there must be ascribed, or ascribable, both states of consciousness and
corporeal characteristics (Strawson 1963, p. 104).
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6 Jonardon Ganeri
3. Epiphenomenalism: Brq haspati and Dichaearchus

Among these various possibilities one suggestion is that Carvaka phil-
osophy of mind is a form of epiphenomenalism. According to this
possibility the mind is a by-product of the material body, lacking in
causal powers of its own. The question has a long history, and indeed
goes back to the first presentation of Brq haspatis thought to a
European audience. In a famous and widely circulated lecture given
to a public meeting of the Royal Asiatic Society in London, February 3,
1827, Henry T. Colebrooke conjectured of Brq haspati that [a]mong the
Greeks, Dicaearchus of Messene held the same tenet (Colebrooke
1837, p. 429). Dicaearchus (c. 350285 BCE) was a member of the
Lyceum and a defender of the harmonia theory, put forward by
Simmias in the Phaedo, that the soul is a tuning (harmonia) or tem-
pering/blend (krasis) of the body, that a blend of hot, cold, fluid,
and dry material is to the soul what the tuning is to the lyre
(Phaedo 86b7c2). Dicaearchus wrote a dialogue, now lost, about
the soul, which is mentioned by several later authors. One important
source is Cicero, who reports:
In the remaining two books, [Dicaearchus] introduces a certain
Pherecrates, an old man from Phthia, said to be a descendant of
Deucalion, who maintains the following. The soul is nothing at all and this
name completely vacuous animals and animate things are so-called in
vain [anima meaning soul], for there is neither soul nor spirit in either
man or beast. That whole power by which we act or are aware extends
evenly through all living bodies and is not separable from the body. In fact,
[that power] is nothing, nor is there anything else, apart from the body just
alone by itself, so configured that it lives and is aware by the tempering
of its nature. (Tusc. disp. 1.10.21 (Cicero 1927))
This is certainly the source relied on by Colebrooke, for he describes

the tenet in question, the one which he finds also in Brq haspati, as
being that there is no such thing as soul in man; that the principle,
by which he perceives and acts, is diffused through the body, is in-
separable from it, and terminates with it (Colebrooke 1837, p. 430).
The view which Sextus Empiricus attributes to Dicaearchus is that
thinking is nothing apart from the body disposed in a certain way
(Adv. math. 7.349 (Sextus Empiricus 1935)). Plutarch introduces a very
similar view, without attributing it: Or is this the case? Namely, that
the substance of the soul isnt anything at all; rather, it is the tempered
body which possesses the power of thinking and living (Against
Colotes 1119ab (Plutarch 1967)).
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The analogy with the tuning of a musical instrument is helpful

because it reminds us that there are three different things we must
keep apart: (i) the blend itself; (ii) the dispositional properties and
causal powers that the body has, and for which the blend is the cat-
egorical base; and (iii) the effects of the blend either on the body or on
other things. One might think of a block of ice, with crystalline struc-
ture, brittleness, and a capacity to cool other things. Reviewing ideas
about the harmonia theory, Victor Caston observes that the idea was
understood by Dicaearchus as a claim that the soul just is the blend
(Caston 1997, 2001). Dicaearchus is described as holding that the soul
is an attunement of the elements of matter that comprise the body,
rather than as a power ascribable to the body in virtue of the attune-
ment.10 Denying that the attunement has any causal powers of its own,
Dicaearchus is an epiphenomenalist.11
Certain classical Indian thinkers likewise interpret Brq haspati
as identifying the mind with a combination of elements in the
body (so that it has no causal power over and above that of the
body), making him an epiphenomenalist like Dicaearchus, while
others claim that his view is that the mind is a distinct power
which emerges from the combination but is not identical to it.
There is textual evidence of this disagreement among the Indian
materialist philosophers of mind. Referring to the basic thesis,
that it is due to the physical elements that there is thinking, we
are informed that:
Here, some commentators explain that thinking arises from (utpadyate)
the elements, while others say that it is made manifest (abhivyajyate) [by
them]. (Kamalasla 1968, pp. 633,15634,1)
10
Aristoxenus, another supporter of the harmonia theory, and someone who went with
Alexander the Great to India, took the tuning to be of the organs and limbs rather than of the
four elements within the body.
11
Caston 2001, p. 185: He accepts Aristotles claim that a harmonia cannot have causal
powers. But he does not think that this is a reason to reject the harmonia theory; if anything, it
is a reason to change our views about the soul. He thinks that while there are mental events,
they are completely inefficacious their alleged effects are to be accounted for solely in terms
of the powers of the body. Dicaearchus position is that of the modern epiphenomenalist.
Caston mentions a passage from Plutarchs On Desire and Grief which attributes the view,
apparently to Dicaearchus, that Some straightforwardly extend belief and calculation into the
body, saying that the soul is not a cause at all, but that it is rather by the difference, quality,
and power of the body that such things come about (Caston 2001, p. 185; cf. Caston 1997,
p. 345).
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8 Jonardon Ganeri
Again:
Some people restore the connecting verb [in due to the elements,
thinking] with is manifested (abhivyajyate), but others with comes into
being (pradhurbhavati). (Prabhacandra 1991, p. 342,23)
This second source goes into much greater detail than any of the
others in explaining the concept manifestation in play here. He
tells us that a manifestation is something which puts together well
or refines and perfects (sam q skaraka) what is already there, rather
than bringing into being something that was not there before
(Prabhacandra 1990, p. 226,1213). As such, the manifestation is not
a separate thing, over and above the four elements, even though it
does have a distinctive characteristic of its own (1990, p. 225,25); it
is not a distinct reality (tattvantara) (1990, p. 115,13). In this, there is
certainly an affinity with the Greek word harmonia, which derives
from a verb for fitting together, for joining things so as to adapt
or accommodate them to each other, such that tempering is
the balancing of one against another so as to produce a dynamic
whole (Caston 1997, pp. 3212). So, the manifestation account, in
thinking of states of mind as refinements of the body, is a close
cousin of the harmonia theory as that theory was understood by
Dicaearchus.
Other Aristotelians, notably Galen and Alexander, are drawn to a
different reading of the harmonia theory, that the harmonia gives rise
to new causal powers and our source too distinguishes such a view
among the possible interpretations of Brq haspatis claim that con-
sciousness arises from the physical elements in the right combination.
This same source indeed provides us with a helpful three-fold classi-
fication of materialist solutions to the mindbody problem. A materi-
alist must claim that the lack of distinction between mind and body
consists in either (i) their necessary identity (svabhava), or (ii) mind
being a quality or state (gunq a) of body, or (iii) mind being an effect
(karya) of the body (Prabhacandra 1990, p. 120,22-23). This division
might be brought into correspondence with the one we have seen in
connection with the harmonia theory: the mind is either identical
to the tempered body, or to the tempering itself, or to a power
caused by that tempering. It might also be said to correspond with
the modern distinction between reductionism, epiphenomenalism,
and emergentism. From here I am interested in the first and third
possibilities.
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4. From covariance to material causation

The notion of supervenience is explicitly formulated in the Indian
discussion of materialism, particularly in critics descriptions of
what materialism is committed to. The supervenience claim is that
fixing the body s physical state fixes its mental state: two bodies
cannot be distinguishable in terms of their mental properties and
yet be indistinguishable in terms of their physical properties. The
Latin term super-venire is a rendering of the Greek epi-ginesthai and
ginesthai epi, terms which are used in a sense close to the modern one
by Alexander and Philoponus. Philoponus in particular uses the
notion in contrast with the idea that psychological characteristics
simply result from (apotelesma) and follow (hepesthai) the blend of
chemical ingredients, and in such a way as to allow mental states to
react back on the body.12 Donald Davidson was the first contemporary
philosopher to promote the use of the notion. He did so as follows:
Mental characteristics are in some sense dependent, or supervenient, on
physical characteristics. Such supervenience might be taken to mean that
there cannot be two events exactly alike in all physical respects but differing
in some mental respects, or that an object cannot alter in some mental respects
without altering in some physical respects. (Davidson 1980, p. 214; my italics)
We can see supervenience as having two components: dependence
(nothing can have mental-properties unless it also has physical-pro-
perties), and determination (nothing can be just like a given thing as
regards its physical-properties without also being just like it as regards
its mental-properties). In short, every mental-property, some physi-
cal-property , and same physical-properties, same mental-properties
(Van Cleve 1990, p. 221).
Supervenience, I have claimed, is explicit in the formulations we
have of Indian physicalist philosophy of mind. It is not to be found in
what one might think of as the obvious place, however. The obvious
place is a certain standard argument for physicalism, one at which
Brq haspati hints in his laconic formulae 1.71.8. Other sources present
the argument in similar terms:
Thinking is a quality of the body, because it is present when there is a body
and absent when there is none.13
12
I owe this information to Richard Sorabji. See further his 2003; 2005, vol. 1, pp. 194, 201,
202; 2010, pp. 334.
13
Gautama 1997, p. 203,3 (Nyaya-sutra 3.2.46). Compare Sanq kara 1917 (Brahma-sutra-
bhasq ya 3.3.53).
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10 Jonardon Ganeri
I will call this the covariance argument. Its premise is that there is
a relation of presence and absence between states of the body and
states of the mind, and its conclusion is that mental states are states of
the body. This relation has two components, covariance in presence
(anvaya) and covariance in absence (vyatireka). The basic pattern,
as Cardona (196768; 1981) has shown, is:
Covariance in presence : When B occurs (tadbhave), A occurs
(tadbhavat).
Covariance in absence : When B is absent (tadabhave), A is
absent (tadabhavat).
Here, A = mind or mental property, and B = body or physical prop-
erty. On scrutiny, it is clear that we do not yet have a supervenience
relation. The two halves of the rule of presence and absence resolve
themselves as follows:
[Presence:] (Necessarily,) anything which has certain physical
properties is thinking.
[Absence:] (Necessarily,) anything which is thinking is a physical
thing (i.e. if x does not have physical properties, then
x does not have any mental properties).
It is clear that this does not specify a relation of supervenience. If this
is all there is to covariance, then the covariance of the physical with
the mental and the mental with the physical lacks the determination
component of the supervenience definition. It does not have same
B-properties, same A-properties feature, but only the weaker every
A-property, some B-property . More particularly, while supervenience
is an asymmetric relation between A and B, covariance is entirely
symmetric. The covariance argument is at best enthymematic, but it
is opaque what suppressed premiss is in the background of appeals
to this argument.
Some of our sources, however, introduce the new thought that the
body is the material cause of thinking (upadana-karanq a), and it turns
out not only that the operative notion of material cause does imply
supervenience, but that this is made explicit. The idea is that, just as a
sculptor could not change the features of a statue without making
changes to the material out of which it is made, so too one cannot
alter mental states without there being some alteration in their
physical basis: we would now call this a relation of constitution.
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Our sources tell us that that it is part of the notion of material cause
that alterations in the material cause are implied by alterations in that
which it is the material cause of. In other words, the idea of a material
cause carries with it the idea of a supervenience base. Having estab-
lished this principle, the critics of materialism go on to argue by
reductio that thinking does not have the physical body as its material
cause: if it did, then the mental would supervene on the physical, but it
does not. Here is one important text:
Is it possible that the elements of matter be the cause of thinking, either as
the material cause or as a co-operating cause? Certainly not as the material
cause, because even when they alter [thinking] does not. If one thing does
not alter when another does, that other is not its material cause; the
relation between a horse and a cow illustrates this. Thinking is not altered
when the material elements that have been transformed into a body alter.
This is not [merely] an undemonstrated assertion, for it is well known that
thinking which is otherwise engaged is unaltered even by the stab of a
knife, which feels [to the preoccupied thinker] no different from a rub of
sandal-paste. In exactly the same way, there can be alterations in thinking
without alterations in the [elements comprising the body]. This too is not an
unfounded claim, since the joyful emotion one feels when near to a lovely
woman alters without ones body changing state. (Prabhacandra 1991,
p. 344,915; my italics)
Another source is if anything even clearer:
Nor is the material cause view correct. For it is well known that the
particular cause regarded as the material cause is one such that an
alteration in the effect is impossible unless one brings about an alteration
in it That is why someone who wants to alter something alters it only by
altering its material cause, and in no other way. For when the material
cause is present and its power is unimpeded, nobody can prevent the
occurrence of its subsequent effect. (Kamalasla 1968, pp. 642,2343,5)
What these passages show is that when someone claims that the rela-
tion between mind and body is one of material causation, better
described as a relation of constitution, that is indeed to make a super-
venience claim.
A modal operator is used explicitly in these two formulations, and
we are in a position to consider whether the supervenience involved is
strong or weak.14 Inverting the conditional, the claim here is that if x is
14
In the modal rather than the possible worlds formulation, given two families of proper-
ties A and B, A weakly supervenes on B if and only if necessarily, if anything x has some
property F in A, then there is at least one property G in B such that x has G, and everything
that has G has F; and A strongly supervenes on B if and only if necessarily, if anything x has
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12 Jonardon Ganeri
the material cause of y then it is not possible to bring about an alter-

ation in y without an alteration in x. What has been said is that if x
undergoes an alteration, then it is impossible to prevent the alteration
in y.15 So the force of the statement is that there are no circumstances
in which the intended alteration in y does not occur and yet the
alteration in x does; that is, necessarily, if x undergoes alteration G,
then y undergoes alteration F. Presuming that the entire claim has the
status of a rule or law (niyama), and so that there is a second, wide
scope, necessity, we can conclude that what is being attributed to the
materialist who sees the relation between mind and body as one of
material causation is a strong supervenience thesis.16 Our source, not
himself a materialist, points out that to deny strong supervenience of
mind on body is not to commit oneself to denying that there are any
circumstances in which physical changes necessitate alterations of the
mind.
What we have so far established is that the classical theory endorses
supervenience, the first requirement for a theory of emergence. With
regard to the second requirement, Mark Bedau argues that we should
distinguish between strong and weak conceptions of emergence in the
following way.17 Strong emergence involves a requirement that emer-
gent properties are supervenient properties with irreducible causal
powers (Bedau 2003, p. 158; cf. OConnor 1994). Weak emergence
involves a less demanding requirement, which in Bedaus account
is the requirement that emergent properties can be derived from
some property F in A, then there is at least one property G in B such that x has G, and
necessarily everything that has G has F.
15
Compare with Kims formulation of what he calls the Principle of Downward Causation:
To cause any property (except those at the very bottom level) to be instantiated, you must
cause the basal conditions from which it arises (1999, p. 24; my italics).
16
The locative absolute in Sanskrit, like the genitive absolute of Greek, can have a condi-
tional, causal, temporal, or circumstantial force. Caston has observed that the genitive absolute
is used, in ancient formulations of supervenience, with conditional force, expressing an ante-
cedent (1997, p. 335). Here the locative absolute is being used in the same way. Caston has also
pointed out that Aristotle might have made his claim with the outermost necessity operator
left implicit; philosophers often overlook this operator when speaking more loosely (1992).
Something very similar occurs here. An agreement in presence and absence is elsewhere
described as a rule or a principle (niyama) (Uddyotakara says, for instance, that material
things possessing weight fall because of it: this is [a case of] a rule). It follows that the
supervenience relation in emergence is here affirmed to carry nomologically rather than mo-
dally strong necessity (agreeing thereby with Noordhof 2010, pp. 712 that supervenience in
emergence is nomologically strong).
17
See Bedau 1997, 2003; cf. Rueger 2000a, 2000b.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

micro-level information but only in a certain complex way . The

complexity requirement is what distinguishes weak emergent causal
powers from the resultant properties of the system: one cannot deduce
weakly emergent phenomena from ones knowledge of the basal con-
ditions, but only simulate them.18 Weak emergence uses dynamical
systems theory to demonstrate how systems can come to present
emergent properties without the strong requirement. The worry is
that if mental properties are only weakly emergent, then they will be
epiphenomenal. In the next section, I will consider two ways in which
the classical theory of Brq haspati is modified in later Carvaka, precisely
in response to this worry. It is a worry which was present in the minds
of the classical thinkers themselves.
Let me bring this phase in the discussion to a close by returning to
Colebrooke and the lecture on Indian materialism he gave in London
in 1827. It is striking now how many of the ideas that were to find a
place in British Emergentism are already there. The first of the British
Emergentists, J. S. Mill, used the example of chemical change to illus-
trate his idea of a heteropathic law in A System of Logic (Mill 1843).
Mill goes on to say that All organised bodies are composed of parts,
similar to those composing inorganic nature, and which have even
themselves existed in an inorganic state; but the phenomena of life,
which result from the juxtaposition of those parts in a certain manner,
bear no analogy to any of the effects which would be produced by the
action of the component substances considered as mere physical agents
(1843, Bk. III, Ch.6, 1; my italics). It seems likely that Mill, a person
whose duties as a senior official of the East India Company included
correspondence with Colebrooke, and who belonged with him to a
circle of London literati based around the Royal Society, would have
heard Colebrookes lecture or read it when it was published in 1837,
the very period he was working on A System of Logic. Colebrookes
work enjoyed an extremely wide circulation even Hegel had some of
his writings, and his translations of Sanskrit mathematical treatises
18
Chalmers (2006, pp. 2523) considers a definition of weak emergence based on complex-
ity (Weak emergence is the phenomenon wherein complex, interesting high-level function is
produced as a result of combining simple low-level mechanisms in simple ways) but prefers a
more overtly epistemological definition, resting on notions of interest and unexpectedness (A
weakly emergent property of a system is an interesting property that is unexpected, given the
underlying principles governing the system). He recommends that strong emergence is best
characterized as non-deducibility even in principle, and suggests that consciousness is the
only strongly emergent phenomenon, all other examples of emergence being weak. The con-
ception of emergence I am developing will be stronger than Chalmerss weak emergence, but
weaker than his strong emergence.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

14 Jonardon Ganeri
were very well known to De Morgan and Boole. I cannot help but
wonder if Brq haspati did not have a hand in the emergence of British
emergentism.19
5. Transformation
A central element in mature Indian emergentism is the notion of a
transformation (parinq ama). In many later sources the materialist
is represented as holding the view that there is a transformation of
those elements which are in the combination making up the body.
Not mentioned in the earliest statements, it is appropriate to regard it
as a development; and we can now begin to see what the motivations
for such a development are. It is here that we should look for a posi-
tive characterization of the emergence relation.
Emergentism begins with the idea that systems which achieve
appropriate levels of organizational complexity instantiate causal
properties which are not exhibited by the components, whether as
individuals or in aggregate. It is expressly stipulated that no familiar
compositional model will render intelligible the emergence of these
new properties. They are not scalar sums, as the mass of a whole is the
scalar sum of the masses of its component parts, nor are they not
vector sums, as the sum of a collection of forces results in a single new
force. Nor are they mixtures, as the mixture of the colours of the parts
results in the colour of the whole. The capacity to think is different in
kind from any of the capacities or properties of the four elements,
no matter how they are combined and synthesized. This is why
Mill speaks of heteropathic laws and Broad of trans-ordinal laws; of
which Brq haspatis thinking is from the elements is alleged to be an
instance. The emergentists much-favoured example is chemical syn-
thesis: for example, the emergence of salt and water from a reaction
involving two quite different compounds, or, as our author said, the
emergence of alcohols powers from a process whose ingredients are
sugar, yeast, barley, and water.
Searle argues that micro-neuronal features are causally sufficient for
the instantiation of macro-mental features, and that this is what it is
19
Colebrookes primary source for Carvaka, Ramatrthas commentary on the
Vedanta-sara, was first published in 1828. It was translated into English by Ram Mohun
Roy in 1832 and into German by Othmar Frank in 1835. Two influential British Indologists,
J. R. Ballantyne and A. E. Gough, published translations in subsequent decades. Thus, classical
Indian emergentism was readily available to English-speaking audiences in the early nineteenth
century.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

for the mental to causally supervene on the physical. Mental proper-

ties are system features [which] cannot be figured out just from the
composition of the elements and environmental relations; they have to
be explained in terms of the causal interactions among the elements
(Searle 1992, p. 126). Searle claims that this is enough to describe them
as emergent properties of the system, but distinguishes his concept of
emergence (which he calls causal emergence) from what he describes
as a more adventurous conception, according to which an emergent
feature such as consciousness could cause things that could not be
explained by the causal behaviour or the neurons: The naive idea is
that consciousness gets squirted out by the behaviour of the neurons
in the brain, but once it has been squirted out, it then has a life of its
own. The difficulty with Searles account is that neither of his two
conceptions of emergence is adequate: causal emergence is too weak
a notion, failing to sustain a robust explanation of the autonomy of
emergent features, while the more adventurous conception fails to do
justice to the requirement that emergent features are dependent on the
micro structures from which they emerge.20 Relatedly, the idea that
the relation between mental and physical properties is one of material
causation (upadana-karanq a) is not held, by later Indian materialists,
to suffice for a satisfactory characterization of emergence. They rec-
ommend a conception of emergence distinct from either of the two
distinguished by Searle.
It is a deeply held intuition that nothing completely new can come
into existence nothing can come into existence which cannot be
understood in terms of the nature of fundamental components and
the ways they can be combined. What had formerly seemed mysteri-
ous about chemical reaction no longer surprises us, with our much
better understanding of the nature of chemical bonds and the struc-
ture of atomic matter. The Carvaka hypothesis about transformation
can be seen as a way to reconcile this attachment to homopathic law
with the key features of emergentism. Without a transformation in the
micro-base, a homopathic theory of the emergence of psychological
capacities is driven inevitably in the direction of panpsychism, for
(so the thought goes) a complex could not think if the elements do
not, any more than a whole could have a mass if all its parts were
massless. The panpsychist alternative to emergentism has indeed
20
Causal emergence has also been recommended in OConnor and Wong 2005; Wong
2006.
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16 Jonardon Ganeri
been taken seriously by a number of philosophers in recent times,21

but our sources provide two strong counter-arguments. One is that
any object at all should then have psychological capacities, and we
are lacking a clear criterion why only some do and others do not.
The other is that, within a single body, there will be many sites of
awareness, but no governing principle orchestrating them:
Even as the power to intoxicate resides to a small measure in each part of
the intoxicating liquor, so too [the materialist must claim that] thinking is
to a small measure in the parts of the body. And then many things will be
thinking in one body. But it is impossible for the respective aims of many
thinking entities to act in conformity, any more than many flying birds,
bound by a single cord but disposed to move in conflicting directions, are
able to cross even the distance of a span, even though the capacity is there
for them to do so. So too the body would be unable to do anything.
(Vacaspati 1980, p. 767,2124; cf. 1996, p. 531,1319)
It is in order to provide a non-panpsychist but not epiphenomenalist
explanation of mental causation that the transformation theory is
introduced. Let us suppose that the blending or combining of the
elements transforms them in such a way that in their transformed
state their combination, according to homopathic principles, instan-
tiates psychological properties. Then it will be true to say that mental
properties are reducible to the properties of the transformed physical
base but equally true that they are irreducible to the properties of the
untransformed base.
One of our sources says that the view is that matter, although
insentient in its inert state, will be bestowed with consciousness
when in a body transformed (Jayanta 1982, pp. 201,26202,1).
Another says that it is the view that thinking, although not observed
in the material earth out there, is present in the elements as trans-
formed in the form of a body (Sano kara 1917, p. 765,7-8). As so ex-
pressed, the idea seems to be that the elements themselves acquire new
causal powers when they are in a certain state, namely the state of
jointly composing a body, powers that they did not have beforehand
when they were in other combinations with other elements. This is
different from the view that the body as a whole has powers which
21
Nagel 1979, pp. 18195; G. Strawson 2006; Van Cleve 1990. Nagels argument for pan-
psychism goes as follows: Human beings are complex systems composed entirely of matter
[Materialism, Anti-Dualism]. Mental properties are not logically implied by any physical
properties [Anti-Reductivism]. Human beings do have mental properties [Anti-
Eliminativism]. There are no emergent properties [Anti-Emergence]. Therefore, the basic phys-
ical constituents of the universe have mental properties [Panpsychism].
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

none of its parts have individually. It is instead the view that the parts
themselves have new powers conditionally upon their membership
of the whole.
There is a resonance of this idea in the way Galen distinguishes
between resultant and emergent properties. He says:
Consider the first elements. Even though these substrata are unable to
perceive, a body capable of perceiving can at some point come into being,
because they are able to act on each other and be affected in various
ways in many successive alterations. For anything constituted out of
many things will be the same sort of thing the constituents happen to
be, should they continue to be such throughout; it will not acquire any
novel characteristic from outside, one that did not also belong to the
constituents. But if the constituents were altered, transformed, and changed
in manifold ways, something of a different type could belong to the composite
that did not belong to the elements Consequently, something heterogen-
ous cannot come from elements that do not change their qualities. But it is
possible from ones that do Therefore, it is necessary that that which is
going to sense be constituted either (i) from first elements capable of
sensation or (ii) from ones incapable of sensation, but naturally such as to
change and alter. (Galen, On the Elements according to Hippocrates, 1.3,
70.1525, 72.1921, 74.1417, trans. Caston, 1997, pp. 3557; my italics)22
Here Galen distinguishes two possibilities. One possibility is that the
power to sense is an additive, resultant property, a possibility which
leads directly to panpsychism. The other possibility is that the power
to sense is an emergent property, and Galens commitment to the
principle that something heterogenous cannot come from elements
that do not change their qualities leads to the conclusion that the
elements must be transformed.
The early British emergentists also use the word transformation, but
seem to mean something rather different by it. Thus Samuel Alexander:
physiological complexes of a sufficient complexity carry mind or conscious-
ness. They may be said to be transformed in the consciousness they
22
Although rightly seeing in the passage an early anticipation of the distinction between
emergent and resultant properties, Caston curiously does not remark on the role to which
Galen accords the concept of transformation. Neither does Kim, who quotes the passage in his
2006b, but glosses it in such a way that the idea of transformation entirely disappears: Galen is
saying that a composite object made up of simpler constituents, when these constituents enter
into special complex relationships (act on each other and be affected in various ways), can
come to exhibit a novel property (something of a different type) not possessed by its
constituents (2006b, p. 189). It seems to me that Caston and Kim are too keen to read
Galen as anticipating modern understandings of emergence, and in doing so fail to notice
an idea which an examination of the Indian theory makes vivid.
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18 Jonardon Ganeri
carry the parts are used up to produce something different from them
and transcending them, but, used up as they are, they are not altered or
superseded but subserve. In this special sense there is a transformation of
the parts in building up a higher existence, but the parts remain what they
were. (Alexander 1920, p. 370; my italics)
Alexander clearly asserts that in his view the parts remain what they
were. Carl Gillett (2006) has proposed that one reads this as the claim
that an emergent property partly determines which causal powers are
contributed by the base properties, that the base properties contribute
causal powers in a way that is conditional upon the fact that they
realize an emergent property. What distinguishes the Indian trans-
formation theory from Samuel Alexanders is its claim that the emer-
gent property determines not only what causal powers the base
properties contribute, but what causal powers they actually possess.
The idea is that the parts have new powers in virtue of being parts of
the whole and therefore intelligible only in reference to the whole to
which they have come to belong. What powers an element has is
conditional on what combination it is in. Emergence by transform-
ation is the idea that the elements have cognitive powers only when in
the frame of a living body, powers they do not have in other sorts of
combination or in no combination at all.
What this brings into view is the availability of a conception of
emergence distinct from either of the two conceptions distinguished
by Searle. The proposal motivating the transformation theory is that,
when micro-entities come together in appropriately complex systems
of organization, the micro-properties they instantiate are transformed
so as to give rise to novel causal powers in the macro-entity they
constitute. The emergence of conscious states is not merely a fact
about our inability to predict the behaviour of very complex systems,
nor is consciousness something which is just squirted out. It is a fact
about the powers of micro-entities when they belong to macrophysical
structures.
6. Downward causation as assistive causation: Udbhatq a

Downward causation is causal influence going down from the higher
level of the mental to the lower level of the physical. The exclusion
problem presents the very notion with seemingly insuperable difficul-
ties. Kims preferred way to formulate the problem is to begin with
mental-mental causation (Kim 1998, pp. 413). Suppose that M is a
mental property, that it has causal powers, and that one of its
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

instantiations is the cause of the instantiation of a second mental

property M*. M* supervenes on, but is not reducible to, a physical
base P*, a set of physical properties. The instantiation of M can cause
an instantiation of M* only by causing an instantiation of its physical
base P*. This is the downward causation. But M too has a physical
base P, whose instantiation is sufficient for the instantiation of M. If
an instantiation M is causally sufficient for an instantiation of P* and
hence of M*, then so too is an instantiation of P. There is an over-
determination in the causation of instantiations of M*. This is a
reductio of the supposition that M has additional causal powers.
Anxieties about downward causation are evidently at work in the
remarkable proposal of a ninth century Indian materialist Bhatq tq a
Udbhatq a, who acquired a reputation as a very cunning interpreter
of Brq haspati.23 He observes that in the sentence Due to the elements
(bhutebhyahq ) there is thinking, the grammatical case can be construed
as ablative or as dative, and he proposes that the force of the dative has
to be acknowledged. The source of our knowledge about his proposal
is this brief passage:
The ancient materialists like Bhavivikta and others interpreted [sutra 1.4]
as asserting Thinking is from the elements, because the ablative has been
employed in the expression (from) the elements. But Udbhatq a interprets
the expression as being in the dative, meaning thinking is to or for the
elements; [he says that] thinking is autonomous (svatantra) and is an
assistant (upakaraka) to the material elements which constitute the body.
(Cakradhara 19824, vol. 2, p. 257; cf. Bhattacharya 2002, p. 606, Bha.9)
Thinking is now not simply an effect of the combinations of material
elements, transformed or otherwise, but also functions as a cause with
respect to them. Thinking is autonomous (svatantra), and it assists
the elements. The important notion of assistive (upakaraka) caus-
ation supplements that of material causation (upadana). Udbhatq as
distinction between two concepts of causation offers him the hope
to be able to explain how the mental can display an appropriate
autonomy and yet be emergent.24
One of our sources offers an analogy by way of explanation of the
new idea. He says that a traveller will start a fire from sparks generated
23
Udbhatq a seems to have attempted to adapt Carvaka emergentism so as to accommodate
Nyaya insights about the unity and autonomy of the self (his commentary on the
Carvaka-sutra being a sort of metaphrasis).
24
The proposal has contemporary supporters. Dretske 1988, for instance, has proposed a
distinction between what he calls structuring and triggering causation. I will refer to an idea
in Lowe 1996 below.
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20 Jonardon Ganeri
by rubbing sticks together, but will then use the flames to keep new
material burning. Similarly, mental properties emerge through trans-
formation from matter, and are thereafter jointly responsible along
with matter for future mental states.25
Another of our sources discusses the idea in the course of a careful
examination of the materialist account of the causation of one mental
event by another, which is also, as I noted above, the context in
which Kim prefers to formulate the problem of downward causation.
A mental event at one time causes a mental event at a later time. How?
Two possibilities are considered. The first is this:
Now suppose one says that [for the mental event] at the later time, the
body acts as an assisting cause and not as a material cause. How so?
The body is an assisting cause in that it helps bring about the later effects of
the thinking which has it as its material cause in the present. So that is how
thinking is causally effective but not independent of the body. (Kamalasla
1968, p. 646,811)
The fundamental issue, that of reconciling autonomy with dependence,
is very clearly identified here. The proposal is that mental events are
jointly produced by earlier mental events in tandem with the physical
bases of the earlier events. In terms of Kims formulation of the problem
of downward causation, the proposal is that M and P are individually
necessary and jointly sufficient for M*, just as the fire and fuel at one
time are jointly productive of fire at the next. What is difficult to under-
stand, in this proposal, is why P is not itself sufficient, if M supervenes
on P. The argument seems already to assume that M has a causal power
not shared with P, but this is exactly what we are trying to explain.
A revised proposal follows:
The body, assisted by the earlier mental event, is the material cause of the
later mental event. (Kamalasla 1968, p. 646,2021)
25
Prabhacandra 1990, pp. 118,11118,15. E. J. Lowe (1996, p. 82) develops an account of
autonomous mental causation based on the idea that agents engage in enabling or facil-
itating causation rather than initiating causation. More recently he has sought to defend a
volitionist account of agency within an emergentist framework with the help of a distinction
between event causation and what he calls agent or substance causation (Lowe 2008). He
says that his view may also fairly be described as an emergentist position, in that it regards the
causal powers of persons as complementing and supplementing rather than either being re-
ducible to or existing entirely independent of those of their bodies (2008, p. 92), and that it
is a form of emergentism in the philosophy of mind, according to which non-physical mental
events and states are causally autonomous and yet are themselves ultimately the products of
prior physical evolution (2008, p. 41). That description seems exactly what the traveller ana-
logy captures. In spite of this similarity, an essential point of difference exists: there is in
Indian materialism no suggestion that subjects qua individual substances are agent causes.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

The new idea is that the physical base P* of the newly produced
mental event M* has M as an assistive cause. I suggest that what
this new proposal does is to combine the idea of assistive causation
with the earlier idea about transformation. The point of the proposal,
then, is that, as is suggested by the analogy of lighting and maintaining
a fire, the earlier emergent mental event contributes to the transform-
ation of the physical base of later emergent mental events. The trans-
formation of the micro-elements is, at later stages in a mental process,
partly subject to causal input from mental properties at earlier stages.
This idea is clearly to be distinguished from an idea which Kim
attributes to Sperry, that there is what he terms synchronic reflexive
downward causation (1999, p. 26), in which a macro feature such as a
pain exerts a causal influence on its own micro-constituents, the basal
neural process such as a C-fibre firing. In the view being articulated
here, the only downward causation is diachronic, while the synchronic
relation (the material causation relation) is constitutive. The dia-
chronic downward causation introduced is similar to that for which
Paul Davies coins the phrase level-entanglement, and illustrates as
follows:
Consider a computer that controls a microprocessor connected to a robot
arm. The arm is free to move in any direction according to the program
of the computer. Now imagine a program that instructs the arm to
reach inside the computers own circuitry and rearrange it, for example, by
throwing a switch or removing a circuit board. This is software-hardware
feedback, where software brings about a change in the very hardware that
supports it. (Davies 2006, p. 43)
One way to unpack the idea further is as follows. It is granted that

both P and M are sufficient causes of P*, but the proposal is that P*
does not represent a physical state which is specifiable as basal to M*
in any way other than as the base of M*. Prior mental states assist in
the production of later ones by delimiting regions of the physical
world along lines and boundaries that the physical world, by itself,
does not acknowledge. A sort of context principle is in play: only in
the context of the presence of a mental property does it make sense to
ask for the region of the physical which that mental property super-
venes upon. A transformation account of emergence explains why this
should be so, for the physical base P is itself the product of a trans-
formation of the constituent elements consequent upon their consti-
tuting the emergence base for preceding mental properties, rather than
merely an assemblage of micro-physical entities in a complex pattern.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

22 Jonardon Ganeri
The proposal insists that mind-mind causation has an explanatory

priority over bottom-up physical causation in the specific and re-
stricted sense that the physical causes of mental states can be identified
only because of mind-mind interactions. Broad says that the only
peculiarity of a trans-ordinal law is that we must wait till we meet
with an actual instance of an object of the higher order before we can
discover such a law; and that we cannot possibly deduce it beforehand
from any combination of laws which we have discovered by observing
aggregates of a lower order (Broad 1925, p. 79). Its irreducibility con-
sists in our inability to specify the physical base or material cause of
the higher level property instantiation other than as the basis of the
instantiation of that higher level property. The reason for this is that
patterns of diachronic assistive causation are responsible for patterns
of transformation in the basal conditions.
7. Mind: flame or tornado?

Rephrased in a more contemporary vocabulary, my interpretation
of the transformation theory is as follows. The emergence of mental
states occurs only within a dynamical system, one whose physical
states are in a constant process of flux produced by the fusion of
elements and the fusion of their microcausal powers. The micro-
dynamic in this dynamical system jointly specifies the total physical
and mental state of the system at any given time, and does so only with
reference to both the physical and the mental state of the system at
earlier times.26 This must happen in such a way that the initial con-
ditions mention only physical states that was the point of the ana-
logy with the traveller and the fire. At each moment in time a mental
state has a physical realizer on which it supervenes, but this is a purely
formal covariance, since there is no way to identify the subvening
physical state other than through the description the physical state
upon which M supervenes. Supervenience functions simply as a con-
straining condition, serving to provide one of the equations that
define the system. Because the domain is itself in a state of flux, the
microdynamic will have variables taking mental property instanti-
ations, physical property instantiations, and micro-entities as values.
26
This enables a role for systemic causation: Mental properties emerge because one of the
capacities of emergent systems is to help generate new emergent systems. That is, systemic
causation involves the creation of stable diachronic patterns (systems distributed over space
and time) in which the stability and integrity of such patterns is maintained across constant
changes in the micro-base of such systems (Silberstein 2006, p. 205).
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

The model postulates that there are privileged dynamical systems

which display strong emergence, systems in which the emergent prop-
erties are not merely complexity effects. Perhaps, as Chalmers (2006,
p. 253) suggests, the weak emergence one finds in normal dynamical
systems is sufficient for all natural phenomena except mind. Perhaps
there is only one sort of dynamical system with the requisite feature,
and that is the embodied mind. Bedau (2003, p. 158) claims that strong
emergence is irrelevant to natural science, and that might be exactly
why the mind is resistant to natural scientific intelligibility, now seen
as an attempt to understand the mind by way of a false analogy with a
natural phenomenon, in this case the sort of complex non-linear dy-
namical system one regularly finds in biology, ecology, and cosmol-
ogy. The claim, in other words, is that the mathematical apparatus
needed to model embodied conscious minds need not be mathematics
that finds application anywhere else in the natural world. And after
all why should it? there is something special about minds. It is the
standpoint of a liberal naturalism, but one in which the departure
from scientific naturalism is the most minimal departure possible.
This is, therefore, the point at which our view parts company with
the enactive model of Francisco Varela. Varela recommends that we
see the relation as one of emergence through self-organization: The
aggregates would arise as one moment of emergence, as in a resonat-
ing network where strictly speaking there is no all-or-nothing separ-
ation between simultaneous (since the emergent pattern itself arises as
a whole) and sequential (since for the pattern to arise there must be a
back-and-forth activity between participating components) (Varela,
Thompson, and Rosch 1991, p. 98), adding that in a culture that did
not have access to scientific notions of circular causality, feedback/
feedforward, and emergent properties, nor to logical formulations for
handling self-reference, the only recourse for expressing an emergent
may have been to say that a process is both cause and effect (1991,
p. 119). This is a dynamical systems model with weak emergence and,
seemingly, synchronic downward causation.27 I have, of course, been
at pains to show that the culture had full access to a good range of
relevant concepts. Varelas neurophenomenological project aims for
the naturalization of all aspects of mind using a type of dynamical
systems model common to the description of the behaviour of
27
See also Thompson 2007, Appendix B, for a spirited attempt to side-step the exclusion
problem within a framework of weak emergence.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

24 Jonardon Ganeri
physical systems. The consequence of what I have said is that such a

project is untenable.
The account I am recommending also differs from an analysis of
emergence recently suggested by Sidney Shoemaker (2002, 2007).
Shoemaker develops a line of thought, which indeed he claims to
find in C. D. Broad, in terms of a notion of micro-latent causal
powers. A micro-latent power is defined as follows:
The component entities have powers that, collectively, determine the
instantiation of the emergent property when they are combined in an
emergence-engendering way. But these being cases of emergence, these
cannot all be powers that manifest themselves when the components are
not combined in emergence-engendering ways. Some of them must be
latent powers. Or, since these powers do not remain latent when their
possessors are combined in emergence-engendering ways, let us speak of
them as micro-latent powers. We can contrast these with the micro-
manifest powers which these same entities manifest when they are not
combined with other entities at all, or are configured in ways that are not
emergence-engendering. (Shoemaker 2007, p. 73)
Shoemaker claims that emergence should be understood in terms of
the existence of micro-latent causal powers which manifest themselves
when the elements are combined in what he calls emergence engen-
dering ways, thereby giving rise to a micro-emergent state of affairs.
He argues that the distinction between micro-latent and micro-
manifest powers is sufficient to solve the exclusion problem for down-
ward causation:
Supposing that micro-entities have micro-latent powers, when a group of
micro-entities that are among the constituents of a macro-entity are
configured in an emergence-engendering way there will be one micro-
physical state of affairs consisting of these particles being configured as
they are and having the micro-manifest powers they have, and another
micro state of affairs consisting in all of this plus their having the
micro-latent powers they have. The first micro state of affairs, which can be
called a micro-physical state of affairs, will be a part of the second, which
can be called a micro-emergent state of affairs. It will be the latter that has
the causal clout required for downward causation. And it will be the latter
that is the instantiation of the one micro-structural property, an emergent
one, that the macro-entity has in virtue of certain of its micro-constituents
being propertied and related as these micro-entities are. (Shoemaker 2002,
p. 63)
Such a proposal does indeed give sense to a notion of transformation:
we might say that the transformation of the elements consists in
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

the activation of their micro-latent powers. Shoemaker, I believe,

thereby does articulate the notion of transformation which the
British emergentists Broad and Alexander had in mind in their use
of the term. However, the two accounts of transformation differ with
respect to the assumption that micro-physical states of affairs persist
and co-exist in emergence-engendering circumstances with emergent
micro-properties. Shoemakers is a description of emergence for
which an appropriate analogy would be the cyclone or tornado.28
The alternative view is characterized by a rather different thought.
The idea is instead that the whole dynamical system, including the
micro-elements themselves, is in a process of mutation, and that
emergent macrostates are consequent upon this process of mutation.
An analogy better than that of the tornado, therefore, is the flame,
pictured as something emergent from a process in which the constitu-
ent material is itself continuously changing, and in ways causally
determined by emergent macrostates. It would be a mistake to de-
scribe this view only in terms of particles shifting their patterns of
aggregation or their emergence-engendering distribution.29
In this respect transformation theory approaches the fusion emer-
gence account of Paul Humphreys. Humphreys defines a fusion op-
erator for property instances, where By a fusion operation, I mean
a real physical operation (1997a, p. 10). In his 2000, he extends the
treatment to fused objects, such as the overlapping wave-functions of
two electrons in close proximity, and offers a partial analogy:
Consider poker chips in a casino. The basic units are red chips, and
as soon as you have accumulated two red chips you can trade them in
for a blue chip that is worth two units. The blue chip is not composed
of two red chips and you cannot count its two components because it
does not have any, but it behaves exactly as if there were two such
units present (2000, p. 289). Yet the transformation theory diverges
from that account too, in that its ambition is to preserve superveni-
ence within a generative model of emergence. Humphreys is explicit
28
Thus Bedau 1997, p. 375:
Some [examples of emergence] involve inanimate matter; e.g. a tornado is a self-organizing
entity caught up in a global pattern of behaviour that seems to be autonomous with respect to
the massive aggregation of air and water molecules which constitute it. Another source of
examples is the mind: our mental life consists of an autonomous, coherent flow of mental
states (beliefs, desires, etc.) that presumably somehow ultimately arise out of the swarm of
biochemical activity among our brainss neurons.
29
Shoemakers attempt to argue that a causal-powers metaphysics is consistent with
non-reductive psycho-physical realization is criticized in OConnor and Churchill 2010.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

26 Jonardon Ganeri
that the technical notion of fusion he introduces cannot sustain

supervenience (Humphreys 1996; 1997b). His fusion operation applies
to property instances, and is characterized by what Wong (2006) aptly
describes as basal loss:
What is most distinctive in fusion emergentism is Humphreyss property
fusion operation, which takes property instances (at the i th level) and
generates an emergent property instance (at the i + 1st level) with novel
causal powers. When property instances at the generating i th level are
fused, the individual property instances are destroyed and are nonindi-
viduable within the emergent fusion existing at the i + 1st level. Call this the
basal loss feature of fusion emergentism. (Wong 2006, p. 345)
This feature of the technical operation Humphreys calls fusion is
essential to his strategy for negotiating the exclusion argument,
for it is the necessitated destruction of the base in fusion which for
him blocks overdetermination. Transformation emergence, however,
is distinguished from fusion emergence in its technical guise in
wishing to endorse what is the majority view, that emergence is a
supervenience-based relation, and in therefore considering that this
formal notion of fusion cannot correctly describe the relationship of
metaphysical dependence involved in emergence. More precisely,
there is no commitment to the necessity of basal loss in the trans-
formation theory, although it will sometimes, perhaps often, be pre-
sent as a contingent feature of emergence-engendering dynamical
systems. Fusion, in a transformation theory, is not a function that
can be defined in advance, but is rather something that is solved
for in the dynamical system, when that system is subject to the general
constraint afforded by supervenience.30
Materialist theories of mind, ancient as well as modern, seek to do
justice to two compelling but apparently incompatible scruples. One is
that ours is a physical world, everything happening within it open to
physical explanation. The other is that mindedness is a matter of
causal significance, that it makes a causal difference that there are
minds. The more we feel the pull of one of these scruples, the more
mysterious becomes the other. A robust commitment to physicalism
leaves the mind looking like an epiphenomenal by-product of natural
processes, a causally inert shadow. But a view of the mind as possess-
ing aetiological autonomy threatens to re-enchant the physical world
with supernatural causes and effects. The attraction of emergentism is
30
For an extended critical discussion of Humphreys, particularly his understanding of the
demands imposed by causal overdetermination, see Wong 2006.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

that it offers a way to escape the dilemma. An emergentist tries to prise

free the soundly motivated scruples about the dependence and auton-
omy of the mental from too-rigid theory, to see the problems as
symptoms of the fact that an insight has been poorly encoded in
doctrine. Such is precisely, I have argued, how the philosophy of
Brq haspati came to be seen. Later philosophers feel the tension that
is created between the demands of dependence and autonomy, and
seek proposals that help one to see a way for these demands to be
compatible. What I have sought to bring to view is the general form
that such a proposal will take.
Without wishing to diminish the points of contact that certainly
exist between transformation theory and the accounts of Varela,
Shoemaker, and Humphreys, I nevertheless want to affirm that it is
a distinct theory with distinctive and important virtues. In particular,
I believe that it makes clear what the key issue for emergence really is.
The metaphor of the traveller and the fire leads to a conception of
body as a dynamical system, flame-like in its mode of persistence, and
fully able to sustain an intertwined mental life, as long as there is an
initial spark of mindedness. As soon as we have located this max-
imally material and minimally mental spark, the model of assistive
causation shows how to move to an account of an embodied stream of
consciousness. Then, by a second application of the same account, we
are led to a conception of a stream of thought as a dynamical system,
flame-like in its mode of persistence, and fully able to sustain an
intertwined first-person life, as long as there is an initial spark of
self-awareness. Once we have located this instigator of minimal
self-awareness, the model of assistive causation shows how to move
to an account of an embodied and enstreamed self. Further recursion
on the model generates higher-order first-person thought, and argu-
ably at some point must settle on moments of reflexive self-awareness,
which serve as attractors in the dynamical system. The entire descrip-
tion, I must stress, is a purely formal model of self-consciousness and
not an account of the actual psycho-biological genesis of mind. The
question is: does anything correspond in fact to the initial sparks of
mindedness and self-awareness which the formal model posits? Rather
than either of Kims, I suggest that this is the key issue upon which the
prospects for emergentism rest.31
31
Many thanks are due to Christian Coseru, Richard Sorabji, Jonathan Lowe, Amber
Carpenter, the audience of the Pranab Kumar Sen Memorial Lecture (Kolkata July 2009),
an audience at a 2009 meeting of the Durham Philosophy Society, the editor of Mind, and
an anonymous referee.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

28 Jonardon Ganeri
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Appendix:
Authors and their dates
Dicaearchus (350285 BCE) Aristotelian epiphenomenalist
Aristoxenus (fl. 335 BCE) Aristotelian epiphenomenalist
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Galen (129216 CE) Physician/Philosopher

Alexander (c. 200 CE) Aristotelian commentator
Brq haspati (date unknown32) Indian Materialist
Sano kara (c. 710) Vedantin
Kamalasla (c. 740795) Buddhist
Bhatq tq a Udbhatq a (c. 800) Materialist/Nyaya
Jayanta (c. 870) Nyaya
Vacaspati (c. 960) Polymath/Nyaya
Prabhacandra (9801065) Jaina
H. T. Colebrooke (17651837); J. S. Mill (18061873); G. H. Lewes
(18171878); C. Lloyd Morgan (18521936); Samuel Alexander (1859
1938); C. D. Broad (18871971)
32
The first known reference to Brq haspati is from the sixth century. He composed his text
in the sutra style, and the usual period of production for texts in that style is thought to be the
interval between 200 BCE and 200 CE. Such texts were often distillations of ideas already in
circulation. There are formal resemblances between Brq haspatis text and other sutra texts
whose dates have been more precisely ascertained; in the Nyayasutra, for example, one finds
the sentence The senses are from the material elements (bhutebhyahq ). It is reasonable to
speculate, therefore, that Brq haspati is no later than 200 CE. For further speculation, see
Muir 1862, Cowell 1862.
Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

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Emergentisms, Ancient and Modern

1. Emergence: the core issues

Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

Generalising, the satisfaction of two conditions is typically regarded as

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As I will demonstrate here, the ancient philosopher of mind

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second claim, which I am not going to consider here, has to do with

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3. Epiphenomenalism: Brq haspati and Dichaearchus

This is certainly the source relied on by Colebrooke, for he describes

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The analogy with the tuning of a musical instrument is helpful

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4. From covariance to material causation

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the material cause of y then it is not possible to bring about an alter-

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micro-level information but only in a certain complex way . The

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for the mental to causally supervene on the physical. Mental proper-

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been taken seriously by a number of philosophers in recent times,21

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6. Downward causation as assistive causation: Udbhatq a

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instantiations is the cause of the instantiation of a second mental

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One way to unpack the idea further is as follows. It is granted that

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The proposal insists that mind-mind causation has an explanatory

7. Mind: flame or tornado?

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The model postulates that there are privileged dynamical systems

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physical systems. The consequence of what I have said is that such a

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the activation of their micro-latent powers. Shoemaker, I believe,

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that the technical notion of fusion he introduces cannot sustain

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that it offers a way to escape the dilemma. An emergentist tries to prise

Mind, Vol. 0 . 0 . 2011 ! Ganeri 2011

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2006: Strong and Weak Emergence. In Clayton and Davies

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Cakradhara. Varanasi: Sampurnananda Sanskrit University,

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Noordhof, Paul 2010: Emergent Causation and Property Causation.

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Silberstein, Michael 1998: Emergence and the Mindbody Problem.

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Galen (129216 CE) Physician/Philosopher

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